Fluensee, a provider of RFID-enabled asset-tracking and supply chain management solutions, has been selected by the Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing Company to provide a system to track, manage, and improve the utilization of its keg fleet. The brewer – perhaps best known for its flagship Fat Tire beer – will deploy Fluensee’s AssetTrack software application and accompanying passive RFID technology to provide visibilty throughout its supply chain.

At the New Belgium brewery, passive RFID readers have been installed along the fill line. As tagged beer kegs pass along the line, the readers collect data for the AssetTrack system, providing insight into which kegs are being filled most often and with what type of beer. This information should help the brewer increase the efficiency of keg use.

“Using Fluensee’s AssetTrack solution and RFID technology helps us automate our keg management process so that we know where our kegs are, how frequently they’re being used and how quickly they are being returned,” says the fittingly named Brendan Beers, packaging materials purchaser for New Belgium Brewing. “Our vision is that RFID will streamline keg movement to our customer sites and throughout our supply chain.”

When the RFID system is fully adopted, New Belgium expects to collect a wide range of supply chain information, including current keg location and status, fill-to-fill cycle time for each keg, the length of time kegs spend at distributors, and the keg return rates of each distributor.